Judicial officials on Tuesday urged people not to take matters into their own hands after several people were detained following a confrontation with police on June 23 outside a residence in Taichung linked to a suspected case of child abuse.
Liu Kuan-ting (劉冠廷) and others are to be charged with breaches of the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法) and obstructing an officer in discharge of their duties, Taichung police said.
Liu allegedly used social media to call on people to gather in front of a building in Taiping District (太平), where a nanny surnamed Kuo (郭) lives, police said.
Liu demanded that the nanny face the public over allegations of child abuse, they said.
Kuo has been accused of assaulting a baby in her care, putting the baby in a coma with signs of trauma to her head, police said.
Liu and others allegedly urged people to throw eggs at the building and light fireworks, while there were three clashes with officers, police said.
More than 200 people created a disturbance until late at night and ignored orders to disperse, so police contained Liu and others who were leading the group, Taichung Police investigator Chen Chun-yen (陳俊彥) said.
“We ask people not to take the law in their own hands,” Chen said.
Liu is a repeat offender, allegedly issuing similar calls to assemble via livestreams on YouTube, Facebook and other social media platforms, police said.
He has fomented threats and violence against criminal suspects, and is reportedly responsible for a gathering of 500 people in Changhua County in January, they said.
Liu has said he is standing up for young and old people seeking justice.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the